Never Miss an Update.

Syria Deeply is designed to provide you with a complete understanding of the Syrian conflict from all angles, including all the major players, issues and drivers of the civil war. Our editors and expert contributors are working around-the-clock to bring you comprehensive coverage and more clarity about the worst humanitarian crisis of our time.

Sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly updates, special reports, and featured insights on Syria’s civil war.

Residents survey the damage after a barrel bomb hit their street in opposition-held areas of Aleppo's Old City in January 2015. Shelly Kittleson

GAZIANTEP, Turkey – “The nightmares only started when I left Aleppo,” says 30-year-old Mahmoud, a Syrian media activist and journalist now living as a refugee in Turkey.

“Before – even after my best friend was killed next to me when we were filming a battle against the regime – I felt sad but I never had nightmares,” he told Refugees Deeply in late September in a southern Turkish border town. Mahmoud lost a finger that day in 2013, and his friend’s skull was shattered.

Over years of reporting in Syria, Mahmoud faced much danger and personal loss. But it wasn’t until six months ago, with the Turkish border closed, smuggling growing more expensive and his hometown entirely besieged, that he finally decided to leave Syria.

It hasn’t brought him much peace. “Now, if a friend checks a telephone in the same room at night and a small light appears, I wake up terrified,” Mahmoud says. “For a few minutes I’m convinced it’s the civil defense coming to dig my family and me out of the rubble, and I panic.”

Mahmoud’s seven brothers and his parents are still in Aleppo. Three of his brothers also work in the media, some for Western media outlets, and others as activists for armed opposition groups.

His older brother, who goes by the name Abdalrahman Ismail, is still working as a photojournalist inside besieged areas of Aleppo.

Now separated by the Turkish border, the story of the two brothers illustrates the divergent yet equally harrowing toll that the Syrian war has exacted on families, colleagues and friends.

The Brother Who Left

Mahmoud was the first member of his family to get involved in anti-regime activities in 2011. He moved out of the family home in a regime-held area of Aleppo when it became too dangerous for his family for him to be there.

Later, after several of his brothers were arrested, his family moved to opposition-held parts of the city, near the front line.

They later went to Jarablus, near the Turkish border, where Mahmoud thought the family would be safer. They stayed in an abandoned school just outside of the town for almost a year.

After ISIS took over Jarablus, the family had to move back to opposition-held parts of Aleppo’s Old City. A barrel bomb hit 66 feet (20 meters) from their home in 2015, blowing out the windows and doors, but none of the family were hurt.

Mahmoud started out as a media activist for an armed group in Aleppo and later began to occasionally sell photos to Agence France-Presse and other Western media outlets. He set up his own local media outlet, Focus Aleppo, with friends in 2014.

He stayed in Aleppo after his friend’s death, and even during a brief period of ISIS control over his area of Aleppo.

He crossed into Turkey surreptitiously to attend several media workshops, but he always returned to Syria. He received support from an Islamic charity to get much-needed surgery for his injuries in Istanbul in mid-2014. He says he never considered leaving for Europe or anywhere else.

Aleppo in late 2014. (Shelly Kittleson)

But eventually, six months ago, he decided to leave. “What I was afraid would happen, has,” he says of the situation in Aleppo, parts of which have been under siege since July 17, when the regime cut the only route left out of the city’s eastern, rebel-held areas.

What I was afraid would happen, has.

Before he left, life in Aleppo had seemed strangely normal, despite the bombing, fighting and other problems, Mahmoud says. But now that he has spent time in Turkey, it no longer does. “And I can’t get used to it again,” he says.

Mahmoud gets most of his news from the city and his family through Facebook and WhatsApp groups. He continues to see Syrians from Aleppo almost every day in the border town, where he is renting a place to stay.

The Brother Who Stayed

His older brother Abdalrahman is still in Aleppo working as a photojournalist, and his photos are regularly published by Reuters.

It is a struggle to keep reporting from inside the besieged city, and fuel shortages make it difficult for him to get to locations when attacks happen. “I have a car, but what little fuel there is left in the city is too expensive,’’ he told Refugees Deeply on a WhatsApp call from inside the city.

When he needs to charge his phone and laptop, Abdalrahman often goes to the homes of other media activists who prepared for the siege by installing solar or wind-powered energy devices.

Abdalrahman is also low on energy himself. There have not been any fruit or vegetables in the besieged areas for some time, he says.

There is also no milk for infants in the city, he says. Abdalraham’s seven-month-old son has just started to eat rice porridge and a few other solids, but he is worried that his son now needs his vaccinations, and there aren’t any available.

His son was born while the city had a brief period of cease-fire, and when it ended he wanted to move the family to a safer area, but he couldn’t find one. “They’re bombing everywhere. There is nowhere in the opposition areas that is safe,” Abdalrahman says.

“Plus, I love Aleppo – I don’t want to leave it,” he continues. “I have seen so many people who die every day, everywhere – even in underground bunkers, they are killed. So what is the point [of leaving]? All I can do is hope and believe that God will protect my family.”

Abdalrahman lost two of his best friends within two days last month. They had spent all their time together, often sleeping in the same media office, and after their deaths, he couldn’t work for 15 days.

But media organizations kept messaging him for more photos, saying that his country needed him to tell the world what was happening in the city, which spurred him to get back to work. “They helped me to go on,” Abdalrahman says. “For this, I am grateful.”

Never miss an update.

Sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly updates, special reports and featured insights as we cover one of the most critical issues of our time.

Never miss an update. Join thousands of industry insiders and get a free weekly wrap-up of need-to-know Syria Deeply news.

Republish this article

Our mission is to empower stakeholders and the wider public with high quality information, insights, and analysis on critical global issues. To help achieve this, we encourage you to republish the text of any article that contains a Republish button on your own news outlet.

By copying the HTML below, you agree to adhere to our republishing guidelines.

By copying the HTML below, you agree to adhere to our republishing guidelines. Click to expand

We simply ask that you:

Ensure that you include a line of our HTML tracking code on every article you republish. This is a lightweight, efficient way for us to see the number of page views of each specific article published on our partners’ websites. This does not affect page layout, nor does it provide any information about your users, other web pages on your site, or any further data. By copying and pasting the HTML code in the box below, the tracking code is automatically included.

If, for any reason, you do not copy the code prepared for you, please paste this code snippet into the end of the article in your CMS:

Note at the top and/or bottom of the story that it originally appeared on Syria Deeply. This note should include a direct link to the original article. Also please include a sentence that offers the reader the opportunity to join the Syria Deeply’s mailing list.

This should read : “This article originally appeared on Syria Deeply. You can find the original here. For important news about the war in Syria, you can sign up to the Syria Deeply email list.”

If you want to republish a photo, contact us. Some sources don't allow their images to be republished without permission.

If you'd like to translate a story into another language, contact us.

We often republish pieces from our partners. If you want to republish a partner’s story, please credit the original partner and include a “via News Deeply” link.

Note that News Deeply considers the publication date to be the date marked on the story, and is not responsible for any content that you choose to repost.

After republication on the partner website, please mention the relevant Deeply social media handle in your social promotion, such as @SyriaDeeply, @WaterDeeply, @WomenGirlsHub on Twitter or tag the appropriate site’s Facebook page.

News Deeply material should not to be provided, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, to third parties or affiliates for redistribution through those entities, unless prior approval has been obtained from News Deeply in writing.

You may not automatically or systematically republish all or the majority of our material from our sites; all stories must be chosen individually.

You may not sell our content or republish it for commercial purposes.

We reserve the right to request that any partner ceases republication of our content, including but not limited to if the guidelines listed above not being followed.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact community@newsdeeply.com